


It Came From The Pacific Ocean

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: (not any of the characters but look if you're sensitive just avoid this one please), And the rest! To a lesser extent, B-movie monsters, B-movie tropes, Hermann's crush on Alan Turing, M/M, Multi, Only marginalized people get to cancel the local apocalypse, Suicide mention, in which the kaiju are a far smaller threat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-25 08:02:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12031614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Hermann Gottlieb moves to San Francisco, little knowing what lurks beneath the waves...While the monster bides its time, Hermann is introduced to a life he never dreamed could be his, with people who will soon become more important to him than he could ever have imagined.





	1. Prologue- Hermann

It had been roughly a year.

 

If Hermann were to measure his life in events, in significant moves and significant losses, it had been roughly a year since the last time two of those had converged.

 

He was sixteen when his family moved to England, so that his father could take a job he was not allowed to talk about, so that his family could learn to eradicate any trace of their native accents, so that they could live in quiet seclusion in the countryside. He was sixteen when he fell in love for the very first time.

 

He had taken it for hero worship at first, and it was that also. He was not socialized with other children his own age at the time, instead he was taught by his mother, and by an extensive library. He was in love with mathematics and astronomy, he always had been. When he discovered the world of computing, he was immediately invested in it. And it was the man who had introduced him to the idea, who had been brilliant in every field that Hermann had ever cared to study, who his young heart had belonged to. A colleague of Lars Gottlieb's, who set Hermann's heart skipping a beat every time he chanced to run into him. The feelings faded in their intensity with time and distance, but the reverence Hermann held for the man's work certainly never did. He suffered through other loves, which he kept close-guarded secrets, but how could he forget what he'd felt for someone who influenced his life and his work so greatly? A man who only ever needed to exist in order to make Hermann's world a brighter place, an easier place.

 

And then, only this past summer, he stopped existing.

 

Lars, who had been nothing but praiseful in the past, completely disavowed any friendly feeling for the man, when the news came out. Nearly everyone seemed to, or they spoke of it as a pity, a dark, shameful pity. That it was shameful to love another man, not that it was shameful to drive a national hero to suicide over it.

 

Hermann had been disgusted, and he had been heartbroken. His family couldn't understand it-- such grief, over a man he'd barely known when he was a child, or barely more than one! And under such circumstances, they couldn't understand him at all, and what was worse, he could not afford to let them. He'd left the country, left his family, and hadn't looked back once. He'd found himself in San Francisco, working for the State College in their Physics and Astronomy department, barely speaking to his family and barely speaking to anyone else.

 

It was a miserable existence, but then, it would have been a miserable existence if he had stayed in England dealing with his parents and siblings, hiding his grief until it choked him. Here, where no one knew him well, he could grieve as openly as he was comfortable with, he could be lonely and heartbroken and avoid people, and that was just the Hermann Gottlieb that they knew, the prematurely-aged professor, leaning on his cane and looking stern and tired. He was a poor fit for socializing, anyway. His peers didn't interest him-- people his own age had lives he had no interest in, other professors had wives and routines he couldn't relate to... it was easier to be alone with his grief, to nurse it gently until it ached constantly, but less acutely.

 

It's summer now. Not yet the anniversary of Hermann's arrival in his new home. Just past the anniversary of the loss that propelled him so far from his old one. Hermann had his research project, his files of old papers, his grief... and he had his new home. For all that his past year had been consumed with unhappiness, he loves this city, what little he has seen of it. He loves his job at the college, loves the views when nights are clear.

 

The views are a saving grace on the occasions that he boards the wrong bus or train-- something he's prone to even after a year, whenever he needs to reach someplace that isn't within his usual routine. It is particularly galling to wind up on the wrong side of the bay from the party one was meant to attend with one's colleagues, but he consoles himself with the thought that most of them did not expect him to show up. He surely won't, having to cross the bridge on foot this late in the evening, and from there he shall have to find more reliable transportation home. It is disconcerting to be on the pedestrian's lane, with cars rushing past, for every time a large vehicle passes too close by, he feels he'll be blown right off. But before long, the traffic going alongside him thins out, which shall make the second leg of his journey more bearable.

 

He pauses to take in the view while things are relatively quiet. Below him, fog rolls over the water, painted silver by moonlight. It obscures small boats entirely, reduces large ships to partial forms and tall masts. It's beautiful, but it can't hold a candle to what's above. When the bay fills with fog and leaves the sky clear, those are the nights Hermann feels the most alive, the most himself. His grief quiets a while to allow him to enjoy the night sky in its full glory, the stars patiently waiting for him, for nights like these. He will never get to go up to space in body, but in mind, oh! In his mind, he could block out the world and feel his feet lift off the ground, the stars welcome him into an eternal embrace. He could soar among them without a thought for his body at all. That cumbersome thing! He wouldn't need it or have it, just a floating brain in space. It is how he feels at the college observatory, when he has the telescope to himself, and it is what he feels when he has a clear night and a high place for stargazing. No body full of pain, no heart full of grief, only an ever-expanding mind!

 

The skid of tires pulls him from his reverie, a clattering sound and a high-pitched shout. Hermann turns, to see a little motor scooter stopped beside the pedestrian line, a man rushing towards him, and for a moment he's struck by a mix of confusion and terror. The stranger seizes his arms, and Hermann struggles a moment until the words filter through to him and he realizes he is not being attacked. He's being rescued-- or at least, that's the stranger's intent.

 

"I wasn't going to jump! Do I honestly look like the sort of person who-- who--" His indignation fails him, and he sputters to a halt. He looks precisely like the sort of person who would take his own life because he has patterned himself after a man who took his own life. The fact that it never entered into Hermann's head to do so doesn't really change those facts. To a stranger who was unaware of his terrible misadventure in trying to get to a party he did not even wish to attend, who was unaware of his thoughts being up among the stars and not down in the bay, of course he looked like a jumper, stopped along the bridge halfway. He yanks his arm free with a snarl, not at all happy to entertain the thought that this man was in the right in disturbing him, and certainly not about to admit it. "I wasn't going to jump!"

 

"Well excuse me!" The little man flails about a bit, red in the face. "I mean _excuse me_ , excuse me for trying to save a fellow human's life! Am I supposed to be a mind-reader?"

 

"Accosting pedestrians--"

 

"Pedestrians stopped dead still staring off into space--"

 

"I was staring off into space, I happen to _enjoy_ staring into space, I happen to enjoy the view from here and when it is finally quiet, you come and nearly ram me with your, your--"

 

"I did _not_ nearly _ram_ you, you insufferable prick! I parked very quickly very close to you but I was never going to hit you!" He screeches. "I was trying to _save_ you, you moron!"

 

"I have a PhD!" Hermann snaps. Insufferable prick, he may be, but moron will not stand!

 

"How nice, I have three!"

 

"Pshaw! Anyone can say--"

 

"Marine biology, neurology, engineering!" He rattles off.

 

"Ridiculous-- even if you were remotely, if you were remotely old enough to possess three PhDs, if I were to accept you had doctorates in two biological fields, engineering is entirely different, how am I supposed to imagine--"

 

"Okay, look me up, smartass! Doctor Newt Geiszler, biology department of the San Francisco State College, _Experientia_ fucking _docet_!"

 

"Well that shall be a very easy thing for me to do, as Doctor Professor Hermann Gottlieb, physics and astronomy department of the San Francisco State College, so-- so why don't you take _that_ experientia and smoke it!"

 

Hermann hasn't felt like this all year. Alive, truly alive, truly _present_ in a way he has not been since receiving that terrible news. But this Geiszler has cut through something in him, and lit a spark. He is furious and scandalized and utterly embarrassed, perversely proud. He exists, his body and his heart exist in the middle of the bridge, heaving and beating hard and feeling more than grief. He tingles with excitement he'd forgotten how to feel...

 

When he completes his second PhD, he is going to rub it in this pretender's face, he'll surely be able to look him up if he even exists-- if 'Newt Geiszler' is any sort of real person.

 

They stand there a long moment, as the anger runs its course-- or at least abates somewhat, leaving the both of them red in the face more out of embarrassment than fury.

 

"Are you really walking all the way across the bridge? Where are you even getting to?"

 

"Dolores Heights." Hermann says, and he holds his chin a little higher, when he sees the man glance down at his cane.

 

"Do you... I mean, you know, do you want a ride or?"

 

He looks at the motor scooter with some suspicion, and Geiszler crosses his arms and looks away.

 

"You don't have to, but I wouldn't wanna walk to Dolores Heights from here."

 

"I wasn't going to." Hermann sneers. After all, on the other side of the bridge, he would be able to find a late bus, or a cab, or a payphone. Someone could pick him up after the party, if he spent the rest of the evening in a bar, though the prospect of spending his evening in a bar is not a pleasant one. When he imagined the sort of people who hung about in bars on a Friday night, he imagined they were the sort of people who would happily make his life more miserable.

 

"So just say 'no thank you' and I'll go, or be a dick about it."

 

"Wait-- er. It's kind of you to offer. I wouldn't-- I don't wish to take you out of your way, or--"

 

"You wouldn't be. I'm just on Polk out near you."

 

"Ah." Hermann nods, and tries to mentally map out the probable distance between them. Well, they wouldn't be conversing on that thing, at least, not like the pressure to carry on small talk in a car to keep from having an awkward silence. "Thank you, then. It-- it's very good of you."

 

"Yeah, well. I mean it's whatever, man." Geiszler got his motor scooter back up and running, pulling off his helmet to offer to Hermann. "Here. I've just got one, so-- but like, you know."

 

Hermann doesn't know at all, but he accepts the helmet. He feels enough trepidation with it, he's glad not to be going without.

 

It's a very awkward thing to climb aboard Geiszler's cheery little death trap, where he must hold onto the man and keep hold of his cane. The ride is smoother than he had feared, but it lasts far too long for his tastes, and when it is over, he feels ready to faint.

 

Geiszler drops him at the park. Hermann dislikes the park, though he cannot think why he should. After riding on the back of that vehicle, he is far less focused on the park and his inexplicable feeling about it, and more pleased to be in one piece, and no longer rattling along clinging to a man he detests for dear life, his cane tucked under his arm with the handle digging into his shoulder at every turn.

 

He makes his way home on shaking legs, with shaking hands. The next day, he is not expected in, but he returns to the college anyway, to look up this Geiszler fellow.

 

Doctor Newton Geiszler does, in fact, exist. Doctor Newton Geiszler has three PhDs, and is working on a fourth and a fifth, which is utterly insane. Doctor Newton Geiszler graduated from MIT in Boston at an age when Hermann was barely able to receive an education of any sort, and even then, only because his father still commanded some scientific respect, but within another year he would be home schooled, and having to play catch-up and adapt to an entirely new way of life soon after that. Doctor Newton Geiszler had had every advantage supporting his genius, he had been American. He had been untouched by so much, free to pursue academic excellence at his own pace. Hermann had never been free, Hermann's idea of an advantage had been that he had survived to adulthood, when he might easily not have.

 

A part of him is furious to have defended an inaccurate opinion in their argument the night before. A part of him is furious that Doctor Newton Geiszler had been telling the truth, that he is brilliant, that he had always been able to be brilliant and to reap the advantages and push himself higher, faster. Moreover, he is incensed that this same Doctor Newton Geiszler, who had shouted and insulted him, had given him a ride home as well, robbing him of the chance to simply detest the man, making things complicated.


	2. Chapter One- The Genius

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hermann has difficulty escaping Newt Geiszler's effect on his life.

On Monday evening, when everyone else has gone from Hermann's research lab, Newton Geiszler-- Doctor Newton Geiszler, he of the three PhDs-- appears in the doorway, blocking Hermann's exit and wearing an expression so smug that Hermann wants to do something, anything, to wipe it from his face.

 

Well-- he wouldn't strike him. As much as he may feel that Geiszler could stand to be struck, the idea of doing so makes his stomach churn. It would be beyond hypocritical, after his own experiences, to punish the man's academic success with physical violence.

 

"Can I help you, Doctor Geiszler?" He asks, weary already and on edge over what the response might be.

 

"Call me Newt." Geiszler strides into the lab, hopping up onto one of the desks, just across a narrow aisle from Hermann's own. "You know I heard you were asking after me."

 

Hermann flushes. "As you invited me to. My curiosity was... piqued."

 

Would Geiszler-- Newt-- know that he had come in on his day off to do so? That thought was intolerable, but after all, it was the college's research lab, over the summer-- why shouldn't the man believe that Hermann ordinarily came in on Saturdays to do his work?

 

"Glad I could pique your curiosity, then." Newt smiles, smugger than ever, kicking his legs like a child and peering over at Hermann's work, work which he could not possibly understand, not even with his cultivated genius. "Like what you found?"

 

"If you only came here to be flattered, Doctor--"

 

"Newt. And you can flatter me if you want, but I do think you owe me an apology for calling me a liar."

 

Hermann's mouth forms a tight line, lips white where they press together, and he he does his best not to glare murderously at the other man, but it really is an effort.

 

"With the information I had at my disposal--"

 

"You could have stood to be polite to me."

 

"Ah yes, I could have been polite to the madman who accosted me."

 

"And drove you home!"

 

Hermann cannot argue with that, as much as he would like to. He'd been offered a ride even after calling Newt a liar, and being in the wrong on that count.  His mouth twists bitterly a moment, and he has to stare pointedly at the wall, and not at the man himself, but he does owe him an apology.

 

"I am sorry to have been-- to have been mistaken. To have been rude." He grinds the words out, huffing when he's managed it. "It was unkind of me, considering your motives. And you did drive me home. For which I do owe you some thanks."

 

When he dares a look back to Geiszler, the man is grinning. Hermann is about to snap at him for how unsporting it is of him to gloat, but he isn't really gloating. He just seems... happy.

 

"Accepted." Newt hops down from the desk, but Hermann barely has a moment to be relieved before he is leaning against Hermann's own desk instead. "So... what are you into?"

 

"I'm a doctor of mathematics. I am working towards a doctorate in astrophysics also."

 

"Yeah, but... I mean, what do you do when you're not doctoring?"

 

Hermann has no answer to that, at least not right away.

 

"Stargazing." He says, after a pause. It is tangentially related to his ongoing studies, but he is not actively pursuing a higher degree in astronomy. "And I have an interest in computer science."

 

"So you never do anything fun."

 

"I beg your pardon, but I do find my leisure pursuits to be fun!" Hermann glares, pushing himself up and gesturing to the door. "You've gotten your apology, Doctor Geiszler, if you don't mind!"

 

"Like, music, television, movies, comic books?"

 

"I'm an adult, Doctor Geiszler, I don't read comic books. Now _out_."

 

" _I'm an adult, Doctor Geiszler_." Newt echoes, in what Hermann sincerely hopes he does not consider to be an approximation of Hermann's own accent. "Adults can read comic books, man. Who's gonna stop you, you're an adult? But I guess you don't do anything, no, that's fine." He looks Hermann over once, and gives him a withering look. "You probably think _Pat Boone_ is too wild and out there. Don't know why I even thought you'd have opinions on music."

 

"I have no idea who _Pat Boone_ is." Hermann sneers right back at him. "I enjoy Glenn Gould. I do listen to music, I am a-- a human person!"

 

"Not knowing who Pat Boone is is even less hip than liking him." Newt makes a face.

 

Hermann likes the Chordettes also, though he wouldn't admit to it, and he likes Fats Waller, and Dmitri Shostakovich's Fourth String Quartet, none of which he thinks he needs to defend to Doctor Geiszler, who seems far too concerned with what is and isn't hip anyway.

 

"Out, please." He points to the door once more, forcefully, and Geiszler rolls his eyes and saunters out.

 

Hermann heads home an hour later, wanting the time to barricade himself in the lab with no human interaction whatsoever after having to put up with Geiszler's attempts at socialization before daring to venture out among the living. 

 

When he does go, Newt Geiszler is not there, a small mercy. Hermann has to stop at the newsagent's and the deli on his way home and he's running far too late.

 

At the newsagent's, he looks over the rack of comic books and tries to imagine what life would have been like if he had grown up with such a little luxury. Such a bit of childhood. Once, Bastien had been given a comic book, by some American who knew Lars through their work, a little gift which Hermann did envy somewhat, though he had made every effort to seem above such things, too old to care for superheroes. Bastien had liked it. But now Bastien was a university student, and probably remembered being given a little present more than he would remember anything about the comic itself.

 

Hermann buys his customary Sky & Telescope, and then he treats himself to a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee while he's at the deli, the idea of cooking for himself upon getting home so much later than usual exhausting. He can make his usual purchase once he's finished.

 

He pays no attention to the coming and going of other patrons, until he hears Newt Geiszler's voice.

 

Well... why not? They were practically in the same neighborhood. He hunches down in his seat and prays he won't be noticed, but of course Geiszler spots him.

 

"You come here?" He plops himself right down at Hermann's table. For a moment, there is another question hovering somewhere behind his eyes, which doesn't reach his lips.

 

"Clearly."

 

"Nowhere else in the city have I ever found a remotely palatable potato salad." Newt says, biting at his lip, casting around, casual tone at odds with everything in his body language. Hermann supposes there has always been a nervous energy in him, though. He had not thought much on it, but he recognizes it had always been there.

 

"I haven't looked anywhere else, to be perfectly honest." Hermann nods. He does wish Newt wouldn't keep sneaking glances at his soup, it's beginning to make him nervous. He feels like he's being cheated off of in some sort of exam.

 

Newt is about to say something else, when his own order comes up, and he bounces up out of his seat to grab it, waving to Hermann and tossing off a 'g'night!' over his shoulder before bopping out of the deli.

 

The man is exhausting, but... he is also intriguing. For all that they have wound up arguing nearly every time they've spoken-- every time they have spoken at length-- it almost seems as if Newt wants to be friendly.

 

Hermann supposes he can understand. He has no talent for friendly himself. He was home-schooled for most of his youth, he never learned to be around any peers, only his siblings, and then there was university, where he didn't entirely fit in, where he trained himself to treat everyone as a potential colleague, but no one as a potential friend.

 

Newt has a way of cutting through to all his insecurities. Newt, who brought up the sore point weighing on Hermann's heart, in an accidental, roundabout way. Newt, who had more PhDs. Newt, who spoke about enjoying things as if he had never had the world fall away beneath him, who... who seems so cocky and insufferable one moment, and so sweet and shy the next, who must have been hurt by other children over and over again for being smarter than they were and unable to conceal the fact.

 

He doesn't see Newt again until Wednesday evening, on his way to the bus stop after work. He passes by Newt with his motor scooter in the parking lot, and screwing up his courage, he turns from his usual course and approaches.

 

"I-- I haven't been to the movies in a year." He says, which wasn't how he meant to begin the conversation at all, but it's too late now. He stares, red-faced, as Newt turns from fussing with his vehicle.

 

"Whoa." Newt stares back.

 

"I mean-- I haven't-- I haven't bothered with it." He says. It's been more than a year, really, but it's only been the past year that he's consciously marked not doing anything. Not going out anywhere. "I-- er-- well. It's just been a while. So I wouldn't know what's good, or-- If anything's good."

 

"Bride of the Monster." Newt supplies. "Well-- it isn't _good_. It isn't good at all, but-- it's still fun. It's playing, you know. I mean-- there's a theater, on Castro?"

 

Hermann nods, then shakes his head. "I mean, I'm not familiar. I'm sure I could find it, I do know where the street is, it's close to my neighborhood."

 

"I know it is. I mean-- Yeah. Well, you should check it out sometime. It's... Movies help. Don't they? You can turn your brain off when you're watching a stupid movie. It's-- you can't turn your brain off just when you want to, but you can in a movie theater."

 

"Can you?" Hermann smiles. It would be nice to turn his brain off for a while. No worries, no grieving, no wondering what his family is up to or obsessing about some problem with work. It's not like he couldn't afford the occasional evening out, his life in America has been downright spartan. He may not make all that much, but he spends far less. He'd considered saving up for this or that specific thing, but when nothing appealed to him, well... he merely saved everything he didn't need for ordinary expenditures or the sensibly-planned paying off of move-and-education-related debts.

 

"I'm pretty sure I'd go crazy if I couldn't go to the movies." Newt nods vehemently. "Last year was a great year for movies-- you didn't see any?"

 

He looks as if his heart might break on Hermann's behalf for a moment. It isn't pity, nor that insufferable sense of cool, but an honest, empathetic reaction to the idea that Hermann had missed out on this greatness.

 

"Well... what came out last year?"

 

"Only 'Creature From the Black Lagoon'!" Newt practically explodes. "And '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea', and 'White Christmas'! 'Johnny Guitar'? 'Rear Window'?!"

 

"I've heard of it, I haven't seen it." Hermann shrugs. "I've heard of a couple of them, I suppose. Anyway, I can't imagine enjoying a Christmas movie."

 

Newt shrugs as well. "It's got music in it. But-- Anyway." He bites back his thoughts on Hermann's musical education.

 

"Well... which one was the best movie last year?"

 

"Definitely 'Creature From the Black Lagoon." Newt says, all thoughts of Hermann's lacking cultural experience out the window, his eyes starry. "It was so good, oh, I wish you had seen it... I wish I could get my hands on a copy!"

 

"On a _movie_?" Hermann goggles at him.

 

"I have a projector." Newt nods, all excitement. Hermann realizes for the first time how close they've gotten, practically on top of each other now. He hadn't thought he was moving into Newt's space, but he's closer to the motor scooter now, he could easily lean against the seat, and Newt is right there... Newt, who has a film projector! "At first it was for film reels taken on expeditions, related to my work? But then I got my hands on a, on a Japanese movie? If there's any movie from last year better than 'Creature From the Black Lagoon', it's this one... I couldn't even understand a word of it the first time I saw it, but I didn't need to, it was-- it was beyond language, you wouldn't believe... I've never seen an American movie as, as beautiful, or as important, or-- I mean--"

 

He speaks of the movie as a man might speak of a religious experience, or possibly how a man might speak of a woman, though Hermann has happily avoided being presented with such disgusting romanticism, in regards to the fairer sex or otherwise. He stops only to lick his lips, to look at Hermann as if his life hinges on what he shall say next, except once again, the question behind his eyes never comes.

 

"Maybe sometime-- oh _shit_!"

 

Hermann turns, following Newt's gaze past his shoulder, to the rumble of the departing bus. His bus. Which he would have been more than on time for, but somehow he isn't even frustrated. There will be a late one, he could return to the lab for a while...

 

"Was that you?" Newt asks, with a wince, awaiting Hermann's ire.

 

"It isn't such a big deal." Hermann shakes his head.

 

"Well... do you want a lift?"

 

Hermann does not, and yet Newt looks so repentant and so hopeful, and perhaps this time, if Hermann says yes... when he gets off at the dratted park, Newt will finish asking him one of his questions.

 

The ride is somewhat less uncomfortable, though he still would not call it enjoyable. Newt does not take him to Dolores Park, but to the Castro Theater.

 

"My treat?" He asks, offering Hermann a steadying hand to dismount by. "You cannot go another month without seeing a movie, the fact that you went a whole year is already so not acceptable to me!"

 

"I've never been to the cinema with a friend before." Hermann admits. It is not remotely what he had meant to say. A polite refusal, perhaps, and that he would make his way home from here, or maybe he would agree to pay his own way, but... Is this what they are now? Friends? Friends who have spent half the time they have known each other fighting?

 

He expects Newt to make fun of him for that, but the look he gets in return is soft and warm. Newt's eyes are green, the color of the scrubby conifers that cling to the cliffsides, or maybe the color that the sea turns on some days. The color of the heart of the forest where Hermann spent his early childhood, before the first time his family had to move...

 

"Neither have I." Newt smiles, a brittle little thing, but hopeful, and Hermann mirrors it.

 

Maybe they will be the sort of friends who fight half the time, and maybe that is good enough.

 

The movie that Newt takes him to is the worst he's seen since he was maybe fifteen. It is abominable, but the entire time that he is watching it, he thinks of nothing else but how laughably bad the thing is, and the fact that he is watching it with a friend.


	3. Chapter Two- Ferry Tales

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> POV SWITCH TIME! And it's not to who you'd expect-- introducing Tendo to the story in a brief little interlude between chapters of Hermann's main narrative.
> 
>  
> 
> Also, all my thanks to SeaW for A) the world's greatest Alison headcanons, and B) helping me work through a much later chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to brag about how much research I am doing for this because I found out there was a queer-ish nightclub in Chinatown in the 50s, and I can't handle that information?? That it had catered to the queer community since at least the late 30s, before the Castro was queer???

It was shaping up to be a dull summer.

 

Sam's is now a Beat hangout, which had seemed cool at first, except when the place was crawling with white kids looking to make their dull lives more exotic, it made Tendo feel even less like he belonged there. Which he could deal with fine, because there are plenty of places that he could go that wouldn't be full of snapping, poetry-spouting strangers...

 

It's that he hasn't seen his favorite passenger all week, a week or more, that really makes the oncoming summer feel hopeless. Did he get a car? An apartment in the city or a job across the bay? It's not like Tendo had ever gotten his name, or anything about him, except that he was cute, and shy, and seemed receptive to having a man interested in him-- not that Tendo had dared flirt openly with him, but that he had that air about him, a certain look, or a certain feeling anyway.

 

Really, as far as looks went, it's hard to even bring up an accurate mental picture a week later. It isn't that his looks were unremarkable, more that all through spring he had hidden himself in a peacoat with the collar turned up, or his turtleneck sweater pulled halfway up his face against the cold sea air. He dressed for the cold even on days that won't be, because the ride always is, or at least it always is when you're at the railing, breeze in your face. When Tendo thinks of him, he thinks of seeing the collar of his turned-up coat, and the beat-up duffel bag over his shoulder, and the mop of dark hair teased by the wind. It was Beat hair, long and shaggy, and maybe the turtleneck was a little Beat, too, but there was none of the obnoxiousness of the kids at Sam's. There were two kinds of Beat kids, though, in Tendo's experience. There were kids who needed a different world than the one they'd inherited, and who gravitated to the same stuff because it gave them something, kids he got, the kid he'd be if he were a couple years younger or if he didn't have a family anchoring him. If he wasn't already in the best city in the world, maybe, but where would he run to, when he's already here? And then there were the other kids, and he could always tell. Most of the kids at Sam Wo's were the second kind. Kids who had never done anything hard or have any hardship placed upon them, who never ran away before and now it seemed like the cool thing. They were dressing up as radicals and cynics and poets and congratulating each other for listening to jazz and being beyond hip.

 

He used to daydream about stealing just a moment to talk to his favorite passenger. He still daydreams about meeting up in the city somewhere. At the park on his day off, or in a shop somewhere, or down by Fisherman's wharf, or just anywhere.

 

He still talks to other people-- there's no shortage of beautiful girls to flirt with, and no shortage of beautiful boys he'd like to flirt with. For that, though, he has to go to Li Po.

 

He goes to Li Po when he'll have a day off in the morning, because as far as he knows it's the only place to go to flirt with boys. You have to separate them out from the tourists who come for the Chinatown 'exoticism', but he's good at that. The steady clientele are there because it's safe to go there. It's safe to tell the bartender you want to send a cocktail to another man, it's safe to find a dark corner to whisper in. It's safe to walk home at night between Li Po and Tendo's apartment complex, though that's mostly because it's safe to walk home anywhere at night, provided you haven't pissed off a gang member lately.

 

Tendo goes to Li Po for the express purpose of flirting with other men, but this time, when he walks in the place, it's a woman who attracts his attention, and he knows he won't be looking at anyone else all night. She had short hair, styled in loose curls, like Liz Taylor-- though unlike Liz Taylor, it was henna-dyed into a dark red, and unlike Liz Taylor, she had the deepest, darkest brown eyes he thinks he's ever seen, which is saying something.

 

Statuesque, that's the word, the only word. Without high heels, she wouldn't be any taller than he is, but with them, she's an absolute goddess, towering over the rest of the club, in a tight angora sweater and relatively modest skirt.

 

He asks her to dance, and she nods and accepts his hand with a blush. Her lipstick matches her sweater, her eyeliner is flawless, everything about her look is so immaculately put-together that he cannot imagine she has not been asked to dance before, which makes being accepted-- accepted with a blush!-- that much sweeter.

 

"I've never seen you here before. I'm sure I'd have noticed."

 

"It's only my second time out here. But it's nice." She nods. Her voice is like smoke and honey, throaty and low and girlish and gentle all at once, and he could listen to her speak every morning and every night of his life. "I'd have noticed if you were here the last time I did come out, too. I used to-- well, I'd have noticed you, too."

 

He imagines there are other people he could stand to hear, mornings or nights, other people he'd very much like to hear talk, very much like to hold, to take dancing or to make dinner for. He hasn't met half the people he thinks he could love getting to know. He's never considered himself the monogamous type before, and he still doesn't really, but if she would look at him like this, and sway in his arms, and speak to him in a voice that was just a little bit his to hear, he could be willing to try. Without even a full dance under his belt, it's a bit premature to think beyond going steady a while, but he doesn't need a full dance to think he'd like to try it. Maybe it wouldn't work, maybe he just wasn't wired to take one special girl out to the movies every other weekend, to forgo nights at Li Po picking up guys who wound up being steady friends if not steady lovers. He's never had something steady that didn't end in tragedy, but he hasn't tried to often enough to call himself cursed, either.

 

"I'm Tendo."

 

"Alison."

 

"Alison." He repeats. "I've never met an Alison before. It's a pretty name."

 

"I'm the only Alison I know, actually." She nods. "It used to be a boys' name and then I think no one used it for a while, and now it's a girls' name."

 

She shrugs a little, and her hand slips down his arm into his own as she twirls away from him and back, and he watches the way the movement lifts her hair before she has spun into his arms once more, and he knows her.

 

For a moment, they both stop, as he searches her face and she searches his eyes, as she tenses.

 

"I'd really like to kiss you." He says, before she can run.

 

"Would you?" Her arm slides back up around his shoulders, she relaxes fractionally.

 

"Ever since I saw the way the wind lifted your hair when we were halfway across the bay. Before you stopped riding."

 

"I moved into the city. You still want to kiss me?"

 

"Very much."

 

"Well, maybe someday you'll get to." She smiles, resting her head against his. "Play your cards right."

 

"I'm actually very good at cards." Tendo grins, his hand returning to the small of her back.

 

"You haven't played against me."

 

"I'm not going to play against you. More like... being bridge partners."

 

"Bridge partners." She laughs softly. He definitely wants to hear that laugh again. If tonight is any indication, he could probably be very happy not dancing with anyone else, taking anyone else out. For as long as things go right, he could be whatever kind of a bridge partner she needed.

 

She lets him walk her home. She also gives him a phone number.

 

It was shaping up to be a fantastic summer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> technically Tendo would be unlikely to have the ferry job because between the 30s and the 60s there wasn't any demand and they all went out of business and I know this but it's one of those times where things really won't work unless I handwave the whole thing and say the ferries ran continuously through the 50s


	4. Chapter Three- A Meeting of Minds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now for the Newt POV... and some adventures in movie-watching.

Newt has imagined having friends before. What it would feel like, what they would be like. They would be like him, mostly. Smart enough to get along with, and strange enough. Accepting, kind, adventurous.

 

He had had an imaginary friend, not when he was a small child-- he cannot remember having an imaginary friend as a child. Now and then he would imagine adventures with characters from books, but it was not the same as what he thinks an imaginary friend is, for he inserted himself into those worlds, rather than bringing a character into his own. Or he did not involve himself at all. He had a treasured stuffed animal, but that at least had been a physical object, something he could hug and pet and take comfort from. It wasn't like completely inventing something invisible to keep him company.

 

He had had an imaginary friend when he was a teenager, barely more than a child, going to university classes with people who had been too grown up for him to connect to, failing to connect to the children his father encouraged him to play with on weekends. His imaginary friend was handsome, the way that Newt was not, and bilingual, and sarcastic, and sometimes a boy and sometimes a girl and sometimes not really either one. His imaginary friend would say the things that Newt would get in trouble for saying, or laugh when he made a joke that no one else got. His imaginary friend kept him sane, though he couldn't tell anyone that he had to resort to something so pathetic at his age.

 

Doctor Hermann Gottlieb is not exactly what Newt thought a real friend would be like. Newt isn't sure if they are friends. They've been to a movie together, and both had said they'd never done so with a friend before, but that isn't the same as saying they are friends. Besides which, Hermann had not really understood the charm of the movie, and Hermann always looked very skeptical about his Vespa despite being conveyed safely on it before, and they argue every time they meet...

 

He likes Hermann, he thinks. He can't stand him, and he likes him. He likes arguing with someone smart. They had met only the other day and Hermann had fought with him about some study that neither of them was even involved in, going on at the college, and Hermann had been brilliant. They had been on equal footing, both knowing about as much as the other on a subject that neither specialized in, and they had shouted themselves hoarse, and it should have been awful, but instead it felt exhilarating.

 

And then, someone had said, not quite to him, 'I've never seen Doctor Gottlieb shout before', and Newt had felt special.

 

It was a sick thing to feel special about, maybe, but he had. He sought Hermann out daily after that. He spent a whole week finding him on his breaks, and more often than not it turned into fighting, but once, Hermann smiled. In the middle of the argument, smiled! Not a mean smile, not an 'I've got you now, you've said something wrong and I can prove it' smile, but a real, happy, beautiful smile.

 

Hermann is the only kind of friend Newt thinks he can really have.

 

There are people in his neighborhood he is friendly with. Most of them are ex-military, which he'd have assumed would be an automatic veto on any friendliness, but before long he learned how many of his neighbors had been drummed out. Some still believed in the institution, which Newt could not understand. Some never really had.

 

His tattoo artist was of the latter group. Like Newt, he was not American by birth, though he'd been in San Francisco a good while. Unlike Newt, he'd come of age in his birth country, and national service had been compulsory, and he'd done his bit and got out-- 'before they could shoot me', as he put it. He was terse, but not mean, and his sensibilities as an artist were mindblowing. Newt still can't bear to mention the tattoo when he calls or writes home, but it makes him happy just to have it, and he itches to be back under the needle. He's seen big, beautiful pieces in the parlor and he knows he wants one. More than one. He sometimes drops in just to say hello, to admire the pictures on the walls showing what might be done for someone, to say he is thinking about his next. To talk to someone about something other than work for just a minute.

 

The men who own the cafe are of the former group, despite the fact that they could have been killed for taking up together. Newt already couldn't understand having any love for the military, being able to support the idea of war in general. Maybe for the men who sat behind desks and made decisions it was easier to send a bunch of boys with guns than to take action early on and work to avoid a conflict, but he has always considered that stupid. No one wants to think that far ahead when there are profits to be made in a war anyway. Adding on top of that the fact that your own side might just kill you over who you fall in love with, he is baffled.

 

Still, he is grateful the cafe exists. Even if he doesn't really talk to the other patrons much, it feels good to be among them. To know he is not alone. Well, perhaps he is. He doesn't know how many of them enjoy both sexes, if any. He knows some of the patrons are widowers whose second chances at love are other men, but not if they felt passion for their wives or not, and he does not want to know. He knows some of them are over-cautious, young. Some are old enough to be his grandfather, which sits heavy on his chest for reasons he never likes to prod at. He knows that people come in alone and leave alone, almost always, but that they sit together. Sometimes in groups. Usually in pairs.

 

He knows that things are passed around. Dirty pictures of a harder-to-find variety, or muscle magazines among the less brave, and little notes bearing messages of hope, and sweet bits of poetry, and lists of novels or of films to look for, and names of places that are safe and places that are not, and telephone numbers of friends-of-friends who wish to meet.

 

It's enough to watch them be close to each other. He doesn't need to be close to them himself. They accept him being here because they all share something, but none of them would like him if they knew him for all that he is, abrasive and too smart and too blind to social cues. They like him if he's quiet and keeps to himself, because they can imagine he's like they are, and not like he is. In some ways he is like them, but he is too much else.

 

He carries around a weight that they don't carry, an extra one. Not the weight of his genius or the weight of his inability to be social the right way, though he bears those, too. There are different kinds-- he sees them in other people, sometimes, he sees a weight that is almost like his and then is not.

 

Sometimes he thinks Hermann carries the same weights he does. An insufferable genius, solitary... there's such a sadness on him, and Newt wonders how much of it they share. He wonders if Hermann is so sad because of family he has lost, or if he was born sad. He wonders if Hermann has spent half his life bearing the same invisible scar Newt bears. He wonders if Hermann would flinch in disgust from his secrets, or if he could embrace them.

 

They would have to actually get along, for that. It's something he can't quite master. They might have a pleasant lunch break and then explode all of a sudden at parting to go back to work, into a furious two-day argument. They might agree on this and that and the other thing only to disagree on one inconsequential matter that spirals out of their control.

 

Hermann is still the closest thing to a friend Newt thinks he has.

 

On the weekend, he goes to the club he was told about, in Chinatown, and he dances awkwardly next to another man who is also dancing awkwardly alone next to him, and they retire into a corner together, and for a while Newt thinks it might be going well, but he still goes home alone, unsure what he'd done wrong.

 

On Monday, he picks a fight with Hermann on purpose, and feels sick with guilt and unable to apologize all the rest of the day.

 

On Friday, he hurries to catch him at the end of the work day.

 

"Do you want to see a movie?" He asks, breathless. "A really good one this time!"

 

"And how good would 'really good' be, exactly?"

 

"The best, the most beautiful movie ever made."

 

Hermann hesitates a moment, and Newt feels like he might shatter. He wants to show Hermann his projector and his favorite movie and the tattoo on the back of his shoulder that he's never shown anyone but the artist.

 

"All right. If it is at the same theater, it's close enough to home." Hermann nods.

 

"Actually, it's-- it's at my place?" He swallows hard. "The one I told you about? I've had it translated-- I can tell you anything you need, but-- but it's beautiful even if you don't understand it."

 

"Oh." Hermann nods, or almost nods. It's more of a nervous tic, and he looks as if he would rather be anywhere else, and it _hurts_ in a way Newt had not thought he could hurt.

 

"I mean you don't have to. We don't have to do anything." He says quickly, before Hermann can see that he's hurt. He turns to go, because he can't even start a fight now or he might let too much of that hurt slip.

 

"Wait." Hermann's voice stops him. "What is the movie about?"

 

"It's... it's complicated." Newt says, because what if Hermann says no because he thinks it's just dumb like the other one? "But-- but it... well, it's about a monster. But it's not like a creature feature monster! It's-- it's really different. It's... it's about-- it's about how war can create scars that might, might not ever be healed, and it's about how science can do more good than military strength when there are problems that need to be solved, and--"

 

His voice cracks a little, and he feels his face go red, but Hermann just nods and takes a step in his direction.

 

"I would like to see it, then. It sounds... it sounds very different from the creature feature you took me to before. Though if you are showing me a film on your projector, I can't repay you for last time by treating you."

 

"Another time. But I mean, anyway... no one has to pay for anything when it's just at my apartment. Unless you want to stop and pick up a couple Cokes or something on the way, or some popcorn."

 

"We could do." This time, there's a little edge of excitement to Hermann's nod, and Newt feels his insides do a rhumba.

 

He's having a friend over. And he can't whip off his shirt and show him his tattoo now, no, but he can show him his projector and his Japanese movie, and his home. He can make popcorn and make Hermann feel at home, and show him his pet rats if he likes, or his books, or his records, and maybe another time he will go to Hermann's, and maybe they won't ruin it by screaming, not when they visit each other at home. And they can fight at work and that can work. He likes it, it makes him work smarter, it keeps him honest in a way no one else really does... but they won't always, they don't have to. Not when they just want to see a movie together.

 

And the weight on Hermann, maybe he can set it down just while the movie is on, even if Newt can't help him carry it the rest of the time.


End file.
